Sunday, November 05, 2006

The 3-2-5-e Loophole Is Exploited

Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema exploits the new 3-2-5-e rule, designed to shorten games. After scoring a touchdown with 23 seconds left in the first half against Penn State, the Badgers successfully run out the clock and keep the Penn State offense off the field by twice being offsides on the kickoff. As for shortening the game, this clip is 6:06 long (worth every second, in our opinion), meaning the final 23 seconds took much longer to run under 3-2-5-e than it would have under the old rules. And a good job by analyst Paul Maguire for picking up on what Bielema was up to. Because the rules can't be changed in the middle of the season, we can only hope other coaches do the same to hasten the repeal of 3-2-5-e in the offseason.Update: We have our first incident of a coach copying Bielema's move. North Dakota State's Craig Bohl, who watched the Penn State-Wisconsin game, used Bielema's tactics during the Bison's 28-24 victory over dreaded California Davis. And please check out the rest of our humble blog.

18 comments:

I think Bielema was making a point about the rule. Penn State getting the ball on the 20 or 30 with 14 seconds left is not enough time for anything. I think Bielema decided if the situation presented itself to exploit the rule just to show how stupid it is.

But with this screwy new rule... who knows what a dead ball is anymore and since the offsides technically occurs before the kick, the ball has not yet been put in play.

I could see a coach get fooled by this tatic once... but he||, if Paul Maguire picked up on it, then certainly any coach at this level knew what was going on and thus would have declined the penalty if they had the option to do so.

They could have taken the penalty. Alvarez has made a statement in responce to this to clarify why they don't. If you watch the video, some of the guys are about 25-30 yards offsides, so the 5 yard penalty would have given them the ball on the 10 yard line. Penn State isn't going to move the ball that far that fast.

You typically don't put time back on the clock after declining a penalty like that. However, there are rules that give the refs the right to do that, and to hit them with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike for "cheating the game" type reasons.

This isn't a dead-ball foul like a false start is. The offsides guys aren't committing a penalty until the ball is kicked. I think a solution might be for the up men on the receiving team to run into them or block them, which would be illegal contact (I think), which would be a penalty with no time running.

Another way to do this trick without being offsides would be to tap the ball a couple inches, then stand around it and block the other team away from it while the seconds ticked away.